Book Review

Shows and Personalities That Changed America

Bernstein Meets Broadway: Collaborative Art in a Time of War, by Carol J. Oja (Oxford University Press, 2014)Review by Bob Maram

Oh what a beautiful morning,Oh what a beautiful day, I’ve got a wonderful feeling, Everything’s going my way (Oklahoma! 1943)

New York, New York, a helluva town.The Bronx is up, but the Battery’s down. (On the Town, 1944)Both of these shows generated new bursts of energy, creativity and magic not only on Broadway but in the entire American world of art, music, dance and theater. Broadway and America itself would never be quite the same. Ironically, a great line from Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment comes to mind. When Raskolnikov’s sister is cornered by an appalling villain who is about to rape her, the young lady pulls a pistol out of her purse. After a dramatic pause, the would-be rapist declares, “That changes everything.” Both Oklahoma! and the less celebrated but equally praiseworthy On The Town changed, if not everything, then a helluva lot!Carol J. Oja’s subject is the musical On the Town and how it affected not only theater but also art, racial discrimination, gender bending and other areas which had previously been considered untouchable – and this during the chaotic period of World War II. Today when lovers of theater hear the names Leonard Bernstein, Jerome Robbins, Betty Comden and Adolph Green, they tend to bow in reverence, but in 1944 who would have thought that a symphony conductor, a ballet choreographer and a pair of Greenwich Village satirists could get together and create a smash Broadway hit. Oja, professor of music and American studies at Harvard University, brings a wealth of knowledge and talent to this project. While her centerpiece is Leonard Bernstein, she gives almost equal attention to the other three principals. She also provides much documented information about the beautiful and exotic Japanese American Sono Osato who played Miss Turnstiles in On the Town. Her father, for example, who was born in Japan but lived in the United States for many years, was interned in a camp because he was considered an enemy alien. Oja also tells us about the trials, tribulations, failures and successes of black artists such as Everett Lee, the concert master and conductor of the On The Town orchestra, whose tale is worthy of a separate biography. There are also interesting and provocative insights into other black artists, including Katherine Dunham, Paul Robeson, Leontyne Price and lesser known but talented performers.Bernstein, Robbins, Comden and Green, were all Jewish, and according to the author, very pro-Soviet and anti-fascist in their thinking, as were many other Jewish artists of that time. Regrettably no mention is made of how they viewed the Nazi-Soviet pact in the late 1930s, before Hitler invaded Russia, or the horrific anti-Semitic Stalinist show trials. However, the gay world within the arts is well-documented, including in ballet, where even the heterosexual pieces were textured by gay shadows hovering in the background. The homosexuality of Bernstein and Robbins is discussed in detail, as well as the sometimes torrid love affair between Bernstein and the composer Aaron Copeland. I wish, however, that the author had mentioned the long marriage between Bernstein and the beautiful actress Felicia Montealegre. Their marriage was not a husband and wife type in the traditional sense, but there was deep love between them until her death in 1976.They even had children together and Bernstein was a devoted husband and father. It is interesting that Oja relates that Jerome Robbins took the “regrettable” step of naming names to the U.S. House Un-American Activities Committee, which was investigating subversives. I wonder why the career of Robbins continued to be successful, as it deserved to be, and he was not hounded by fellow liberals, as was the equally, if not greater, artistic talent, the superb film and theater director Elia Kazan. Perhaps the liberal blame game was a bit stacked.Oja describes the genesis of On The Town, which was the ballet Fancy Free, also about three sailors on a short liberty pass to New York in search of sightseeing, adventure, and of course, girls. Oja dwells on the love of lyricists Comden and Green for Gilbert and Sullivan (especially The Mikado) and for classical music, and how the classicists influenced their work. The line “Three little psychopaths are we,” for example, is based on The Mikado’s “Three little maids from school are we.” In addition:I’ve learned a lot from the science of drinking,From doing lots of scientific thinking,Now take Isolde, when Tristan wouldn’t sin, To make him bolder she simply slipped him some gin.Miss Oja’s study also reminds us that although there were wonderful all-black productions in the past such as Show Boat (1927) and Porgy and Bess (1935), On the Town was the first one with racial blind-casting, and blacks were not confined to the roles of black mammies, maids or butlers. Sadly, this breakthrough was missing in the film version (1949). I would have loved seeing Frank Sinatra and Lena Horne cavorting off together!The connections between the world of On the Town during the 1940s and progress in America are numerous. The political and social satire of Comden and Green paved the way in the 1950s and 1960s for the great artistry of Mort Sahl at the Hungry I in San Francisco, the delightful Shelley Berman at the Compass Club in Chicago, and the witty and wise Elaine May/Mike Nichols duo. The wonderful Tom Lehrer, with his incredible satirical lyrics, is worthy, too, of his predecessors. While these performers were decidedly liberal they did their thing with very little (thankfully) Marxist cant. The partial opening up toward closet gays by the creators of On the Town gave homosexuals more confidence, leading, eventually, to the Stonewall riots in 1969 and to today’s fight for gay marriage. There are certainly links between the ballets of Robbins and Agnes DeMille and the modern jazz ballet of Bob Fosse and of Kylian in The Netherlands. I am probably taking too giant a step in at least hoping that the road taken toward greater racial equality in On the Town has led to more Black Iagos than Black Othellos.I’ve saved the last part of this review to honor the producer of On the Town, George Abbott, without whom the play could never have been mounted. Oja gives him much credit, but a man like George Abbott can never get too much credit or honor. He was the personification of Broadway and he was the most un-Broadwayish of them all. He wasn’t Jewish, wasn’t gay, wasn’t a New Yorker, and wasn’t even from the East Coast. He was from Wyoming, of all places, and he knew instinctively the difference between honest and phony. In the program for the opening of Pajama Game (1954) he wrote:This is a very serious drama. It’s kind of a problem play. It’s about Capital and Labor. I wouldn’t bother to make such a point of all of this except later on if you happen to see a lot of naked women being chased through the woods, I don’t want you to get the wrong impression. This play is full of symbolism.Abbot’s success record has never been surpassed and probably never will be. He lived until the age of 107. When in 1993 he was busy re/writing the musical Damn Yankees and was asked what the new script was like he answered, “It’s hard to say, but it’s better than most 106-year-old writers are doing.” Mr. Abbott (he was always addressed as Mr. Abbott) understood that musicals could have their own dramatic integrity. Mark Steyn in his fascinating essay, “Missing Mister Abbott,” recalls that had it not been for Abbot’s direction of Rodgers and Hart s On Your Toes, in 1936, and Pal Joey, in 1940, Rodgers, with his new partner Hammerstein, would never have risked creating the unforgettable Oklahoma!. Mr. Abbott spotted something honest, original and creative in the work of Leonard Bernstein and the other three neophytes, with their new concept. And Mr. Abbott took on the task. I mourn the loss of George Abbott and I celebrate Carol J. Oja’s intriguing and absorbing book.